CHINA  SCIENCE  AND  TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
The Ministry of Science and Technology
People's Republic of China
 
N0.312 November 10,2002
IN THIS ISSUE
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* Six Priorities for Modernizing Chinese Traditional Medicines
* Six Major Targets for China's Space Industry
* NDB and MOST Join Hands
* Success of　China-France　Advanced　Studies
* Breakthrough Progress on Bionanometer Grains
* 18-inch Vertically Pulled Silicon Crystal
* Breakthroughs in China's Transgenic Milk Goat
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SPECIAL ISSUES
Six Priorities for Modernizing Chinese Traditional Medicines

On November 3rd, 2002, Li Xueyong, Chinese Vice Minister of Science and Technology unveiled for the first time at 2002' International S and T Conference on Modernization of Chinese Traditional Medicines China's strategies on developing its traditional medicine industry in the new century and six concrete priority areas.

The development strategies: accelerate the process of traditional medicine modernization with innovation as the core; improve the quality of traditional medicinal products with focus on standardization; promote the development of traditional medicine in the direction of market; strengthen the protection of traditional medicine resources and ecological environment, supporting the sustainable development of traditional medicine industry; jointly promote traditional medicine modernization development with integrated strength; and stimulate the coordinated development of Chinese traditional medical treatments and associated products on a supplementary basis.

In the aspects of accelerating the construction of innovation platforms, China will fully absorb the strength of different sectors to strengthen the application and innovation of new technologies, establish and improve the system for traditional medicines screening and associated effect evaluation, security assessment, clinic evaluation, adverse reaction monitoring and R and D platform for manufacturing technologies, techniques and quality control. China also will take advantage of the strength while focusing on specialty on an overall basis, establishing traditional medicine industrial bases for the organic collaboration and coordinated development of medicinal herb growing, research, development and production. Meanwhile, China will strengthen the construction of infrastructures and supporting platforms such as national key labs for traditional medicines, national traditional medicine engineering and technology research centers and common information sharing platform, improving lab conditions for traditional medicine research and development and upgrading the level of the instrument and equipment and the criteria for animal experiments.

In order to accelerate the standardization study of Chinese traditional medicines, China will strengthen the standardization efforts for its traditional medicinal herb growing and preparation, fully improving the quality of traditional medicinal herbs and products; establish national standard traditional medicinal materials bank, improving the quality control of traditional medicines, relentlessly promoting and implementing quality control standards in different areas and raising the standardization level of the entire sector.

True, China will strengthen its basic studies of traditional medicines with modern technologies. First, it will carry out in-depth multiple-discipline based study of the material basis of traditional medicines, effect mechanism, rules of recipe formulation while advocating for the genome and protein studies on traditional medicines. At the same time, it will pay more attention to the basic theoretical study and innovation of traditional medicines, especially the theoretical study related to the development of traditional medicine modernization.

Mr. Li also briefed the Conference of several other priority areas for further development such as accelerating the innovation of traditional medicines, developing the advantageous industries in the sector, traditional medicine resources protection and sustainable utilization.

Six Major Targets for China's Space Industry

Ma Xingrui, Deputy General Manager of China Space S and T Group expressed recently that the Group would hit six major targets in the next decade, including manned space flight and a long-term stable operation of its satellite based ground observation system.  

—Establish a long-term stable operational system for satellite based ground observation. The system will house meteorological satellite series, resources series, marine series and mini satellites for environment and disaster monitoring. The system will make 3-dimentional observations and dynamic monitoring of the land, atmosphere and oceans over China and its adjacent areas.

—Establish proprietary satellite broadcasting and telecommunication system. It is to support the development of commercial broadcasting and telecommunication satellites, developing geostationary telecommunication satellites and live broadcasting satellites of long life-span, high reliability and large volume, and preliminarily establishing China's satellite based telecommunication industry.

—Establish proprietary satellite navigation and positioning system. It will establish navigation and positioning satellite series on a phased basis, developing applied system for satellite navigation and positioning, and preliminarily establishing China's satellite navigation and positioning application industry.

—Fully enhance the overall level and capacity of China's carrier rockets. It is going to improve the performance and reliability of the existing Long-March series carrier rockets while developing new-generation carrier rockets of toxicant and pollution free with high performance and low costs, constructing the new-generation carrier rocket series and enhancing China's capacity for international commercial launching.

—Realize manned space flight and preliminarily establish R and D support system for manned space flight engineering and experiments.

—Establish a coordinated national satellite based remote sensing application system. It will construct under the unified planning diversified satellite based remote sensing ground application systems and establish the nation-wide ground system to receive, process and distribute satellite remote sensing data, realizing data sharing. As a result it will establish a relatively complete operational application system in major applications fields of satellite remote sensing.

NDB and MOST Join Hands

On November 1st, 2002, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Development Bank jointly inked a financial cooperation agreement for S and T activities. The agreement will become a platform for the collaboration between the two parties in raising funds for S and T activities, further promoting the combination of S and T innovation and banking innovation, stimulating the full-fledged development of China's S and T industries and accelerating the construction of credit system and loan restructuring.

It is briefed that to promote the fast development of China's S and T industries, efforts have been made to raise funds from diversified channels to support the development in the sector. To promote the development of the national high tech industrial development parks, NDB has provided loans as much as RMB 10 billion and  more for infrastructure construction in 14 national high  tech industrial development parks in Beijing, Chongqing, Harbin, Changchun, Baotou and other places. To support the development of small and medium S and T businesses, NDP has created high tech pioneering loans to support creating high tech industrial businesses and so far has promised the loans totaled RMB 680 million for five high tech pioneering investment companies.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
Success of China-France Advanced Studies

The so-called China-France Advanced Study Program is co-sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Research and New Technologies under the China-France Protocol on the Cooperation in the Field of Science and Technology. Aiming at promoting and strengthening the cooperation efforts between the two nations in the aspects of basic sciences and high technologies, the Program has covered a number of fields such as biotechnology, biomedicine, applied mathematics and automation, environment, materials and earth sciences. The cooperation will find its implementation through research projects, seminars and joint labs.

In the last decade, the Program has achieved complete success and become the most important component in the bilateral S and T cooperation between the two countries. The Program has promoted the collaborative studies of high technologies and basic sciences between them and won the high praises of both governments. The Program has established and implemented 241 projects in the past decade with 700 and more papers published and 600 and more students granted with Doctor or Master's degrees in the course of the implementation.

It is briefed that both governments have created dedicated funds to support the implementation of the Program. In the last decade, China has invested RMB 33.74 million in the Program with the French side contributing FF 1 million in the initial stage and FF 4 million in the later stage as the result of the increasing number of projects and activities implemented.

At the 10th session of China-France Joint Committee of Science and Technology, both parities signed an official agreement to establish a China-France S and T Center in Beijing so as to strengthen S and T cooperation activities between them. In addition, both parties will kick off a new research network program to promote the exchanges among S and T personnel of the two countries under the existing projects framework, promoting the high level S and T cooperation between the labs of the two countries.

China-Canada Joint Graphics Lab

On October 21, 2002, the Automation Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences inked a cooperation agreement with Canada based Matrox, the world largest graphic products supplier, on joint construction of a graphics lab.  According to the agreement, Matrox will provide advanced instruments and equipment for the new lab while the Chinese side providing advanced, the domestically developed graphic software for the research activities in the lab.

The development marked the first transnational cooperation in the field of graphics between Chinese research institutions and foreign companies. The joint lab will with the help of the most advanced graphic collection and processing software, hardware equipment and management bring out fine expertise for China's industrial graphic processing and automation, promoting the spin-off of graphic research results into products and serving the economic construction and social development.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Breakthrough Progress on Bionanometer Grains

The study team headed by Prof. Wang Kemin of Hunan University has successfully worked out a number of new biological nanometer grains with both cores and skins through their theoretical and technical studies of monocells and monomolecules at nanometer scale. Meanwhile, the study team have applied for 3 invention patents for the original results.

The study team has conducted research based applications on these wonder grains in a number of ways. Scientists used fluorescent nanometer grains that are smaller than cells but with a similar physical size compared with that of viruses to perform diagnosis of major diseases such as leukemia and systematic lupus erythematosus at their earlier stage. The results have shown that these grains present a sensitivity several thousand times that of currently available methods. Now these functional magnetic grains may quickly separate DNA matters from animal and plant tissues or cells, which provides an advanced means to decode biological mysteries. Scientists have also used dyed nanometer grains to work out green cosmetic products able to absorb ultraviolet rays and paints resistant to light washing and color fading.

It is reported that the study team have overcome three major technical difficulties: nuclei forming  technology to work out biological material with a diameter of only several dozen nanometers in even size; skin wrapping technology to coat the nuclei materials with transparent inorganic elements and degradable organic elements of several nanometers thick; and biological surface furnishing technology to connect the skin with large biological molecules having various functions.

The study team has harvested in the study one major breakthrough in nanometer biotech theory and the other in nanometer biological preparation technique.

18-inch Vertically Pulled Silicon Crystal

China’s first 18-inch silicon crystal made its debut recently at Beijing Non-ferrous Metal Research Institute, which marks China’s world advanced ranking in the study of large caliber silicon crystal.

The institute worked out China’s first 6-inch, 8-inch and 12-inch silicon crystals in 1992, 1995 and 1997 respectively. It also established China’s first production line for manufacturing 8-inch silicon disks, which provided the most important basic functional materials for manufacturing integrated circuits of 0.25-0.5 microns.

Breakthroughs in China's Transgenic Milk Goat

Qingdao Senmiao Industries Co. Ltd. announced not long ago that it has in collaboration with Genetic and Developing Biology Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an overseas research institute witnessed the birth of four milk goats carrying transgenic protein cells for medicinal purpose in the past one month. The four transgenic milk goats are the results of two-year study of milk gland biological reactor and three of them have been doing well. Born separately during the period from September 28 to October 7 ,2002, the four transgenic milk goats have been tested on their DNA for carrying prescribed β-interferon genes and antithrombinIII genes, though one of them died later.

New Rice Cytoplasm Discovered

Yu Jinhong of Life Science Institute of Wuhan University and others have successfully discovered a new cytoplasm source of high values through their study of rice pollen free cytoplasm male infertility. The discovery has been recently granted with national invention patent.

The invention has for the first time in the world found the process creating rice pollen free cytoplasm male infertility, and proposed a new cytoplasm sources called rice pollen free cytoplasm male infertility. Under such breeding process, hybrid rice seeds may see greatly improved purity and remarkably enhanced production level, hybrid strength, rice quality and field diseases resistance, promising for extensive diffusion.

The World First Super Hydraulic Aluminum Extruder

China Shandong Congling Group has in collaboration with Xi’an Heavy Duty Machinery Institute and Shanghai Heavy Duty Machinery Works successfully developed the world first hydraulic aluminum extruder with dual movements capable of an effective extruding weight of ten thousand tons, which filled up a blank in China’s history of heavy duty extruder making.

It is briefed that the extruder is of a design capacity for two tiered weights of 9000 tons and 10,000 tons. In the tests, its maximum extruding weight reached 13,500 tons, much heavier than its designed value. The extruder has turned out a qualified product in its first trial running. Designed with an annual capacity for 10,000 tons of aluminum materials, the extruder is able to produce special aluminum alloy materials of the maximum diameter of 970 mm and length of 60 meters and seamless aluminum tubes of an external diameter of 560 mm.

Bus Brake Noise Eliminated

The proprietary air pressure disk brake system jointly developed by Automobile Engineering Institute of Wuhan Polytechnic University and Wuhan Yuanfeng Auto Parts Co. has recently seen breakthrough progress. The development has implied that China will soon find effective solution to the brake noise that has long troubled Chinese bus commuters.

It is briefed that some major domestic auto manufactures such as Dongfeng, Jinlong and Jianghuai have fed back with positive testing results. As is shown by the authoritative testing, the vehicles equipped with the new brake system will give out zero noise when braking. Under normal conditions, the brake may last 80,000 km without replacing any of its parts, which will not only greatly reduce drivers’ working intensity but also reduce the running costs.